Achievement

IGERT associate, Ms. Nethika Suraweera, (advised by Engineering Prof. David Keffer) and IGERT trainee, Austin Albert (advised by Chemistry Prof. Craig Barnes), are preparing a jointly authored paper describing hydrogen physisorption in metal-decorated silsesquioxane matrices. Because Ms. Suraweera & Mr. Albert are advised by an interdisciplinary team of faculty who have come together as a result of this IGERT, the resulting work contains both computational and experimental investigations of the structure of mesoporous adsorbents for gas storage and separation. All of the simulation work was performed by Suraweera. The novel materials were synthesized by Albert. Direct head-to-head comparison of hydrogen adsorption isotherms in the materials as a function of metal content using simulated isotherms from Suraweera and experimental isotherms from Albert are included in the paper. Subsequent work involving methane and carbon dioxide (rather than hydrogen) is also underway.